Hollow Tree

We came upon this amazing sycamore tree while hiking.  The hollow core still held a living branch that reached toward the sky like an upright arm. The "door' was more than six feet tall, an entrance to an imaginary place. There was some wooden planks secured across the top giving it a house like appearance. Phone booth? elevator?

The rest of the tree was lying across a ditch to our right. It must have been incredibly tall.


I looked up some interesting things about these trees.

A sycamore can grow to massive proportions, typically reaching up to 30 to 40 meters (98 to 130 ft) high and 1.5 to 2 meters (4.9 to 6.6 ft) in diameter when grown in deep soils. The largest of the species have been measured to 51 meters (167 ft), and nearly 4 meters (13 ft) in diameter. Larger specimens were recorded in historical times. In 1770, near the junction of the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers. George Washington recorded in his journal a sycamore measuring nearly 45 feet (14 m) in circumference at 3 feet (91 cm) from the ground.

The sycamore is able to endure a big city environment and has been extensively planted as a shade tree. It bears transplanting well and grows rapidly.
I remember as a young boy the streets of Flatbush in Brooklyn had many really tall trees of this type. The canopy  shaded the streets and made stickball games in summer a little cooler and a bit more challenging chasing pop flies way up in the leaves.